If Israel had committed ethnic cleansing, it wouldn't be in today's pickle

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Posted by Goerge Jonas in NP on 09:12:42 2008/05/11

This article is not in defense of ethnic cleansing, but proof that if Israel were truly guilty of ethnic cleansing, it would not face the problems it does today from a population of hostile Palestinian Arabs living on Western and Israeli handouts whose population has grown by 800 percent, hardly evidence of ethnic cleansing.

Your browser does not support inline frames, or it has been configured incorrectly. If page does not display on your browser, please <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=dd48cb53-e34e-45c5-9242-8b0bf6384414">CLICK HERE</a>. Bereft of original sin National Post Canada.com Network Browse the Canada.com Network Home News Sports Entertainment Health Travel Obituaries Celebrating Contractors National Post Victoria Times Colonist The Province (Vancouver) Vancouver Sun Edmonton Journal Calgary Herald Regina Leader-Post Saskatoon StarPhoenix Windsor Star Ottawa Citizen The Gazette (Montreal) DOSE Vancouver Island Newspapers VANNET Newspapers Global TV Global National Global BC Global Calgary Global Edmonton Global Lethbridge Global Saskatoon Global Regina Global Winnipeg Global Ontario Global Quebec Global Maritimes E! 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People say they're good for letting the bile rise; they offer the old liver a workout. Better still, you don't need to go to bad newspapers for it. There are liver-stirring items in good newspapers as well. This week, for instance, if you wanted to read something bilious, you didn't have to cross the street to the competition. You could curl up with Jeet Heer's piece right here in Wednesday's National Post. Notice I say "bilious," not "badly written." I think Mr. Heer describing Israel's "original sin" as ethnic cleansing was a well-written bilious piece. The Post's editors didn't unleash Mr. Heer without warning. They honked. They wrote an editorial pointing out that Mr. Heer's piece "parrots some of the standard myths." Presumably, they ran it to encourage our readers to shop under one roof, which is perfectly sensible. Newspapers these days function as department stores rather than boutiques. Why should we send our customers to the competition for silly opinions? We can provide them ourselves -- and often, as in this case, in more stylish packaging than our rivals. The competition's "bilious" tends to be crude, simplistic and jury-rigged. Our "bilious" is state-of-the-art. "Ethnic cleansing" is a modern expression--maybe 25 years old -- used to condemn a practice as ancient as human history. Victorious groups sometimes exterminate, expel or enslave and absorb hostile groups from contested territories, usually following a series of military engagements. At a rough estimate, 80% of all nations occupy their current place under the sun because their ancestors have successfully "cleansed" -- that is, exterminated, expelled or assimilated -- some other group from a disputed geographic location. About 15% are still in the process of doing so, or have been in our lifetime. Only a few have agreed to share (Canada) or partition (Czechoslovakia) their territories with a semblance of good grace, at least relative to the singular lack of grace exhibited by competing groups in the Balkans, southeast Asia, Mesopotamia, etc. Of course, noting that a practice has been common to every epoch and every region only puts it into context; it doesn't excuse it. "Everybody does it," while perfectly true, isn't the best defence. Israel can do better than that against Mr. Heer's charge of ethnic cleansing. Israel's defence is that it didn't do it. Maybe if it had, it wouldn't be in the demographic pickle in which it is today. What Israel did was to prevent itself from being ethnically cleansed -- so far. In November, 1947, following five decades of struggle to establish a Jewish homeland on the British-ruled Palestine Mandate -- a region previously under the governance of the "Sublime" Turkish Porte, and long before that the Canaan of myth and history -- a vote in the United Nations partitioned the land between Palestinians and Jews. The Zionists unhappily agreed; the Arabs rejected partition. 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If India had committed ethnic cleansing, it wouldn't be in today's pickle - Ron 11:32:31 2008/05/11 (0)

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